Welcome to Strixhaven Exit Interview week!
If you missed Srixhaven First Impressions week, various members of the SCG Staff shared their thoughts on their Top 5 Strixhaven cards in each format before having the opportunity to play with them. With Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms preview season almost complete, we thought it would be fun to have those same folks update their lists now that they’ve had the opportunity to play with Strixhaven for the past few months and share what they got right, what they got wrong, what surprised them, etc.
Yesterday we kicked things off with Standard, today we’ll knock out Historic, Thursday will be Pioneer, and Friday will be Modern. The same scoring system we had in place for Strixhaven First Impression week will be in place here so that we can get an idea of what card ranked in what place in the aggregate to close out each article. The scoring system is as follows:
- 1st — 5 points
- 2nd — 4 points
- 3rd — 3 points
- 4th — 2 points
- 5th — 1 point
Let’s once again start things off with Alabama’s favorite son! #RollTodd
Todd Anderson
Previous List
- Faithless Looting
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Memory Lapse
- Brainstorm
- Lightning Helix
New List
- Brainstorm
- Memory Lapse
- Faithless Looting
- Time Warp
- Elite Spellbinder
My initial reads on this set’s impact for Historic were mostly accurate, but there are so many cards that have completely reshaped the face of the format. Brainstorm is still great, helping a bunch of different blue decks keep from flooding. It provides a burst of potential spells for Izzet Phoenix, helps smooth draws from Izzet/Jeskai Control, and will probably be played as a four-of in most blue decks as long as its legal in Historic.
Memory Lapse is outrageous. I hate playing against it and feel that it’s far too strong for the format as a whole. It isn’t a permanent answer to anything, but it acts like a buffer against your opponent’s best card while simultaneously stunting their development in some spots. It’s rare that using a counterspell on a late-game Llanowar Elves is correct, but Memory Lapse makes it devastating because you’re stopping it and killing their next draw step. Memory Lapse is better than Counterspell in a lot of shells and in a lot of situations.
Faithless Looting has put Izzet Phoenix back on the menu and it’s been a delight to play. I missed it so much when Faithless Looting was banned in Modern, so it feels good to get to play one of my favorite decks again. I haven’t seen too much that makes me think Faithless Looting will get banned. I was always under the impression that it was a net good for Modern, but mechanics like Dredge ruined the party.
Time Warp got banned for a few reasons, but mostly because it created landslide games. Five mana for an extra turn is not a large price to pay, and it’s much easier to gain an advantage from taking extra turns these days because of huge mana generation, cheating permanents onto the battlefield, and planeswalker loyalty abilities. I’m not confident that banning Time Warp over another card was correct, as far as pinning the culprit responsible for the crimes, but no one who’s playing Time Warp is doing it under fair and normal circumstances.
Lastly, I’m not surprised at how much of an impact Elite Spellbinder had on Historic, but I’m blown away by how much better it’s been than a card that was previously on my list: Inquisition of Kozilek. It’s seeing play in virtually all white creature decks and all Collected Company decks, offering a potent three-drop that bashes while disrupting your opponent’s best spell. Adding two mana to a sweeper effect can be the difference in winning and losing. Taking their best spell and stalling it out for two turns is bonkers, and especially so when you realize that three power on a flying creature is terrifying.
In the long run, Inquisition of Kozilek will likely end seeing more play, but Elite Spellbinder has helped Selesnya Company become one of the top decks in the format.
Bryan Gottlieb
Previous List
- Brainstorm
- Faithless Looting
- Inquisition of Kozliek
- Time Warp
- Mind’s Desire
New List
- Brainstorm
- Faithless Looting
- Time Warp
- Mizzix’s Mastery
- Memory Lapse
I’m fairly pleased with my initial Top 5 list for Strixhaven’s addition to the Historic format. I may have missed on Memory Lapse and Mizzix’s Mastery, but I assure you, they were both sitting in my honorable mentions (and here’s some podcast proof if you don’t believe me). Mind’s Desire was soundly supplanted by things that were somehow even more broken, but I’m not convinced we’ve seen the end of that card in Historic. Inquisition of Kozilek has put up a completely respectable performance in its best homes — it just hasn’t really altered the landscape of Historic all that much with Thoughtseize already available.
The top of this list is indisputable though. Brainstorm and Faithless Looting have forever altered the trajectory of the Historic format. I imagine there will be several more rounds of bannings targeting the cards around these two before we finally acknowledge the problem that was obvious from the beginning. These are two of the most powerful Magic cards ever printed, and playing without one or both is not something you should do until they’re taken away from you.
Ari Lax
Previous List
- Faithless Looting
- Brainstorm
- Tendrils of Agony
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Memory Lapse
New List
- Brainstorm
- Tainted Pact
- Faithless Looting
- Mizzix’s Mastery
- Expressive Iteration
Not putting Brainstorm in first place was a bad bet. It’s the best card in Historic by such a wide margin that the “in Historic” part of this sentence makes no sense. Tainted Pact deserves credit for being the only good reason so far to not play four Brainstorm. Faithless Looting is basically baby Brainstorm, so as soon as Brainstorm gets the boot get ready to play the Looting format for a while.
There’s actually a lot of good cards in discussion for the last slot, even outside the Mystical Archives. Was it Mizzix’s Mastery or Magma Opus that made that such a common pairing in the format? What about Prismari Command setting up Indomitable Creativity so well? Is Inquisition of Kozilek insane but just not the right card for a Brainstorm format? Is Memory Lapse the best two-drop interaction? Was Time Warp even in the Top 10 cards in Strixhaven for this format? I erred on the cheap spell side early, but I think Mizzix’s Mastery early and end-game explosiveness ended up being too much to ignore.
And then there’s Expressive Iteration, which ended up here because no matter how you slice these spell debates, it’s hanging around. Drawing two cards for two mana is still great in 2021 — not everything has gone crazy.
I’m still waiting on any Ritual effect for the Storm cards though, since it looks like we fell just a little short. Back in 2003 Standard we were Mind’s Desire-ing off Early Harvest and ramp spells, it won’t take a lot for things to rapidly become nonsense with the same cards.
Gerry Thompson
Previous List
- Brainstorm
- Faithless Looting
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Time Warp
- Memory Lapse
New List
- Brainstorm
- Memory Lapse
- Faithless Looting
- Time Warp
- Inquisition of Kozilek
Sometimes, you nail it. I could repost my entire entry and it would hold up. Historic was my most-played format at the time and I’ve played with all these cards before, which lead to solid knowledge of how things would play out.
Brainstorm and Faithless Looting were obvious to anyone who had ever cast those cards. It didn’t matter that, up until that point, Historic didn’t resemble Legacy. With Brainstorm and Faithless Looting in the format, Historic would shift to resemble Legacy. One of the surprises was how widely adopted Memory Lapse became. I thought people would play a couple copies and slowly move that number up, but before I knew it, I was seeing it as a four-of in many maindecks.
Time Warp was problematic and eventually banned but it mainly suffered from the sins of Brainstorm. Historic is certainly more exciting with Brainstorm in the mix, but how many cards will have to get banned for the problems its causing?
Unfortunately for Inquisition of Kozilek, it doesn’t line up well against Brainstorm. That’s not where you want to position yourself.
Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa
Previous List
- Brainstorm
- Faithless Looting
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Lightning Helix
- Magma Opus
New List
- Brainstorm
- Faithless Looting
- Memory Lapse
- Magma Opus / Mizzix’s Mastery
- Lightning Helix
Strixhaven’s impact in Historic was much bigger than its impact in Standard, and not only because of the Mystical Archive. Cards like Prismari Command, Expressive Iteration, Velomachus Lorehold, Baleful Mastery, Vanishing Verse, and Magma Opus are all better in Historic than in Standard. My list here was also much more accurate than my list in Standard, but that wasn’t a very hard prediction considering that we’ve already played with all these cards, so we already had a pretty good idea of how good they were.
Brainstorm topping the list should be no surprise; it’s one of the best cards in the game period, and it made blue decks rise in popularity. Whether you’re playing Izzet Phoenix, Dimir Control, Jeskai Control or any Indomitable Creativity deck, there will be four Brainstorms in your deck (or three if you’re Seth Manfield, but usually four), and they will be integral to your success. I expect Brainstorm to remain the most powerful card in Historic until something very drastic happens.
Faithless Looting didn’t have the impact I expected for the Rakdos decks (Rakdos Arcanist has basically disappeared), but it’s still a key piece in the most played deck in the format (Izzet Phoenix) as well as seeing random play in Dragonstorm and Emergent Ultimatum combo decks.
Memory Lapse was my biggest miss. I thought it was going to be good, but I was only thinking about Dimir Rogues. It’s a 10/10 in that deck for sure, but it also turned out to be very good in all the blue control decks. It turns out you don’t need to answer everything, you just need to delay them a little bit, and the card works exceedingly well with Teferi, Hero of Dominaria.
In fourth place, I have two cards, because I think they’re basically a combo that will always go together. I’m not very interested in playing one without the other at all, so it would feel weird to separate them. If forced to choose, I’d probably pick Magma Opus for its interaction with Torrential Gearhulk, but you’re really just hoping to play these two cards and they’re very strong together, often managing to stifle any aggressive plans your opponent might have by themselves.
Lightning Helix only sees play in one major deck (Jeskai Control), but it’s a very important part of it. Without Helix, the deck might not exist, so I think it deserves to be in the top 5.
You might have noticed that I didn’t include Time Warp, the only card from Strixhaven to actually get banned. I think Time Warp was a good card, but the other blue and red cards on the list were simply more powerful pieces in the same shell, and while banning Time Warp might kill that version of the deck, we already saw people playing the Temur lists in the July Strixhaven League Weekend. Time Warp was not very good outside of the Velomachus Lorehold combo decks, so I feel comfortable putting the other pieces ahead of it on the list.
Shaheen Soorani
Previous List
- Mind’s Desire
- Brainstorm
- Faithless Looting
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Time Warp
New List
- Brainstorm
- Time Warp
- Expressive Iteration
- Magma Opus
- Faithless Looting
The best Historic cards of Strixhaven were not hard to pinpoint once everything was previewed. The avalanche of broken cards was pushed into Historic, ones that have defined formats of the past. Identifying that these incoming cards would be problematic was the easy part, with the real challenge being their official ranking.
I had Inquisition of Kozilek as an honorable mention in my new list, but the day goes hands down to the Izzet League. Magma Opus, Expressive Iteration, Faithless Looting, and Brainstorm continue to dominate the Historic format, spells that most of the content creators here knew would be an issue. The format is not healthy, and the banning of Time Warp did nothing to alleviate the pain other archetypes are having. Even if Collected Company takes down a random event here and there, Izzet-based decks still represent the top tier force in competitive play.
With all my correctness here, I was dead wrong on Mind’s Desire. That’s the boomer mentality inside me, remembering the absolute terror that Storm decks brought in the olden days. The times have changed, and the fast mana is non-existent, making the cheap enablers the problem. Mind’s Desire would be busted if other supportive elements are there but remains fringe without them. In the meantime, the rest of my Top 5 list makes Historic a tough place to compete.
WotC banned Time Warp, not putting a dent into the Strixhaven-controlled format. The true culprit is Brainstorm and until it’s removed, the format will have balance issues. Some may find it odd that I’m a proponent to ban my favorite spell in the game, but even I have my limits. This is one of those choices that hurts, even though I know its for best. I expect we will need a couple more bans from this revised Top 5 list before Historic is a fun place to play again.
Dom Harvey
Previous List
- Brainstorm
- Faithless Looting
- Mizzix’s Mastery
- Time Warp
- Magma Opus
New List
- Brainstorm
- Faithless Looting
- Mizzix’s Mastery
- Tainted Pact
- Time Warp
I was confident in putting Brainstorm and Faithless Looting at the top of my list before and I’m not surprised they have stayed there. They have allowed Izzet Phoenix to rise from the ashes and become the deck to beat in Historic but in general they have enabled the degenerate nonsense in the Mystical Archive and ensured that Steam Vents is on top of Historic until something changes.
Mizzix’s Mastery was the true culprit for Time Warp’s crimes and is bound to earn another sentence before long. As I explained in my column above, there’s a whole family of Mizzix’s Mastery combo decks ready to pounce on an unsuspecting format but the interaction with Magma Opus is what allows it to show up in more normal decks as an ideal backup plan.
Tainted Pact didn’t make my original list but I realized its potential quickly and enjoyed watching it devour Historic. Perhaps this is just a testament to how ridiculous Thassa’s Oracle is; Tainted Pact hasn’t been seen since that ban despite the presence of several alternative combos with it in the format but I’m optimistic some form of Dimir Tainted Pact can remain a contender (though not an oppressive one) in Historic.
And now, without further ado, the SCG Staff’s Top 5 Strixhaven cards for Historic are now…
5. Mizzix’s Mastery — 9 points
4. Memory Lapse — 12 points
3. Time Warp — 12 points
2. Faithless Looting — 22 points
1. Brainstorm — 35 points
Cya back here tomorrow to review Strixhaven’s impact on Pioneer!
